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Greenland
Lifestyle
Lisa Lim
Language Matters
Lisa Lim

How Greenland’s language is just as invaluable as its minerals, oil and strategic location

Greenlandic has been an emblem of identity as the territory advanced to political autonomy and has given us words like igloo and anorak

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Locals stand on a snowy shoreline at dusk in Nuuk, Greenland. Greenland’s linguistic heritage reflects Inuit history and the territory’s evolving autonomy through the years. Photo: AFP
Lisa Lim
Lisa Lim has held professoriate positions at universities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Sydney, and Perth, including as Head of the School of English at the University of Hong Kong.

In addition to Greenland’s vast deposits of critical minerals, including rare earth elements, its significant oil and natural gas reserves, and strategic security-critical Arctic location – assets now widely familiar since the US threat to annex this autonomous territory of Denmark – Greenland’s language is also invaluable.

In prehistoric times, successive waves of Paleo-Inuit (Paleo-Eskimo) peoples inhabited the island. The early 10th century then saw Norse arrivals, led by Erik the Red, who, exiled from Iceland – not to be confused with Greenland – christened the island in the hope that a favourable name like “Grœnland” would attract settlers; these early Norse settlements disappeared by the early 15th century.

The last Inuit arrivals, the Thule, reached Greenland around 1300, having moved slowly eastwards from Alaska since their culture’s development around 1000. Three-quarters of today’s Greenlandic Inuit – who comprise 90 per cent of Greenland’s 56,000-strong population – are descended from the Thule.

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